


As I have always been

by AliceParrilla18



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 7x09, Angst, Character Death, Crying, Emotions, F/M, Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Heartbreak, Heavy Angst, Hurt, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Philinda - Freeform, Team as Family, philindaisy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:00:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25452796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceParrilla18/pseuds/AliceParrilla18
Summary: "What the hell was going on here? How was it possible that two people died in a matter of minutes, even though nothing was wrong with them a moment ago? Who, or what, was killing them? And how many more is it going to kill?"Or, Phil and Daisy are stuck in a time storm's loop and are forced to watch all of their loved ones die one by one.
Relationships: Melinda May & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson & Melinda May & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson/Melinda May
Comments: 12
Kudos: 73





	As I have always been

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this fic is sad, like SAD sad (don't say I didn't warn you, lol). I was crying myself while writing most of it so it might get a little messy sometimes, but hey, it's AoS who's gonna kill all of our favs in one episode in the first place, so put the blame on them, hahah. English is not my main language, so I'm sorry for mistakes (please, remember that we're all human and that we write here for fun). Hope you'll like this story, despite it being so emotional. Let me know what you think about in the comments! Enjoy!
> 
> Title of the story is also the title of episode 7x09.  
> Warning : Major character(s) death(s)! [see what I did here? lmao don't mind me, I'll just get back to crying]

As Coulson felt the energy spill over his body, bringing it back to life again, he wasn't sure which time it had been, but he knew exactly what Daisy standing in front of him was just about to say.

"I’m sorry I have to turn you on, but I really need your help. You won’ believe it, but I…"

"Keep repeating the same events over and over again?" he finished for her, knowing her words by heart already. "How long did it take you to figure it out this time?"

Daisy opened her mouth in shock, but after a moment her eyes flashed with hope. "So I’m not crazy then, you’re not a part of the loop too?"

"For whatever reason we both aren’t it’s part." Coulson walked out of his charging place and came over to the girl. "Something very bad is going on here, and we need to find out what it is."

"But how do we do that?" Daisy frowned, crossing her arms over her chest. "Deke said that we got trapped in some kind of a time storm. What does it mean, how did we get here? And how are we suppoused to fix it by just two of us?"

"Well, at least we have an endless number of tries," he said, smiling a little to make the atmosphere a bit more bearable. The corner of Daisy's mouth also went up.

Their smiles, however, vanished as quickly as they appeared when a shrill scream rang out from the command center, that sent shivers down their spines and the blood chill in their veins.

"What the…"

When the scream repeated, they both ran out of the room and down the corridor to where it had came from. Coulson didn't know what he really expected, but what he saw in the command center took his breath away. Deke was laying motionless on the floor, his body unnaturally twisted in every possible direction, in a pool of his own blood, and Sousa was trying to hold up Mack, whose face looked burned at one side.

They both ran up to him, grabbing him by the shoulders and settled him on the floor against the wall. "What happened?!" asked Coulson, terrified. Daisy walked over to Deke and put her trembling fingers to his neck. She covered her mouth with her hand when she felt no pulse, staring in horror at her friend's lifeless body.

"I… I don’t know, I came here right before you when I heard the screams," Sousa said. He had his eyes wide open and his voice was trembling. "I found Mack like this, and Deke, he was already…" he started but couldn’t finish, not accepting or understanding what had just happened.

Coulson knelt beside Mack, trying to get a closer look at his injuries. "Mack, what happened to you and Deke? Tell me, who did this to you?" he asked, but the man was unable to answer. He was shaking all over and groaning in pain while covering his face, and they didn't know how to help him. Coulson turned to look at Daisy, who was still standing over Deke, mesmerized. "Daisy," he said gently but firmly to get her attention back to him. "You can’t help him. We need to focus on the rest of the team now."

The girl blinked a few times, breaking out of her lethargy. Several tears ran down her cheeks. "Yeah. Yeah, you’re right," she replied, moving her gaze at him, but something else caught her attention and her eyes suddenly widened with terror. "Daniel?"

Phil looked at the man just as his mouth was filled with thick, dark blood that he quickly started to choke with. Coulson helped him sit down next to Mack, and Daisy appeared by their side a second later. Sousa's face grew pale with every moment and with every cough of blood.

"Hey, stay with us, don’t close your eyes," Daisy pleaded, but the man's eyes dimmed already. "Everything’s gonna be okay, you hear me? You’re going to be okay."

But before she could utter her last words, Sousa caughed out the blood one last time, and then his head fell limp to one side and he was gone, too.

What the hell was going on here? How was it possible that two people died in a matter of minutes, even though nothing was wrong with them a moment ago? Who, or _what,_ was killing them? And how many more is it going to kill?

"Daisy, we need to find the others," Coulson repeated and stood up, forcing himself to look away from the massacre around them. He grabbed the girl's hand, pulling her away from Sousa. She was crying. They were both terrified, but they had to think about those who still could be given help. "We need to try to save them."

"We’re going to loose them all," she whispered so softly that Coulson could barely hear her. He grabbed her face in his hands and gently forced her to look at him. She had been through too much, she needed a break.

"That’s not going to happen, but we need to hurry. We’ll search the plane. If you find someone, bring them here, alright? We’re _not_ going to loose them all," he repeated, though his voice didn’t sound as sure as it always was, and he didn't know who he was really trying to convince.

Daisy took a deep breath and nodded lightly, though Phil suspected that the shock wasn’t letting her hear all of his words. "Okay." He squeezed her arm gently to encourage her.

"Alright. Go there, I’ll go the opposite way. Be careful."

He didn't want to let her go alone, but he knew that with each passing second, the risk of finding another body instead of a team member was increasing.

They separated, and after a few minutes Coulson's assumptions were confirmed. He ran to Elena, who was lying motionless on the bed in her cabin. One look at her told him he didn't need to look for a pulse because he wouldn't find it anyway. Whatever killed her was the same thing that killed Sousa. Elena's mouth, all of her shirt, and the sheets around her were covered with as much blood as if there was no drop of it left in her body.

Coulson had been through a lot in his life, but what was happening now was worse than everything. He would better have himself dying over and over again rather than watching his loved ones die and not being able to prevent it. Neither of them deserved it. They were too good people to end up like this. They were his family, damn it. He should be protecting them, he should be keeping them safe. It was his only freaking job, and he failed.

Why was this happening to them?

At that moment, as he was almost unconsciously withdrawing from Elena's room, it dawned on him that there was another person he still needed to find. The one he should have found at the very beginning.

Not thinking much, he started running down the dark corridor towards the cockpit. Every second separating him from his destination seemed to be taking forever to pass, as if something inside him wanted to drag him away, stop him from getting there.

When he finally got near the cockpit, he realized it would be better for him to listen to his inner voice and stay as far away as possible.

He was late. That thought and the sight in front of him, though he didn't think anything else could shock him anymore, made him nauseous and caused tears to appear in his eyes.

She was lying on her side against the wall, completely still. Her pale skin was contrasting with the blackness of her hair and clothes, and the redness of her blood smeared across her face and chest. The blood was also on the floor, creating a path long for several meters all the way from the cockpit door, as if someone had dragged her from there.

He had seen her tiny body covered in blood many times. He had thought he lost her many times before, too. But this time it was different, this time certainty was tearing his mechanical heart painfully from within. He didn't even have to come any closer to know that she was dead.

Her eyes were _open_. Her eyes, in which he could always see her soul and read whatever she wanted to tell him, were still and hazy, dark as never before and completely lifeless, aimed directly at him.

 _No. Please, not her_.

"I can’t find Jemma, have you seen…" he heard Daisy's voice suddenly appear next to him. He wanted to stand in front of her to shield the view from her eyes, to pull her as far away from the cockpit as possible so that she wouldn’t have to look at her mother-figure's lifeless body, but his own mechanical one completely refused to obey. Right then, May's empty eyes were the only thing he could focus on.

The last thing he heard before darkness engulfed everything around was the girl's heartbreaking cry.

*

When he was turned back on, Daisy wasn't standing in front of him. She was sitting in the corner of the room, arms around her legs she tucked under her in an unconsciously defensive gesture, and a stream of tears falling down her cheeks. It was too much for her. Coulson knew he should hug her, reassure her that everything would be okay, but he just couldn't do it now. He started running as soon as he felt the energy back in his legs. He couldn't waste any time. May had gone through his death and mourned him more times she should have and definitely more times than she deserved. Now it was his turn to be with her in her final moments, before they came up with something that would make them not the last at all. And he was going to be there for her every time, even to the end of the world if necessary, so that she wouldn’t be alone anymore. He more than owed that to her.

There was neither her nor the bloody path on the corridor floor when he got there. Hoping that it wasn't too late this time, Coulson opened the cockpit door.

When he saw May standing holding onto the back of one of the pilot’s seats and spitting blood for the first time, he suddenly realized that Deke wasn’t the first who got killed by this strange power. _May_ was. And the bloody marks on the floor were made as she had crawled trying to get to the team. She had tried to save herself with the last bits of strength she had left.

As she began to wobble, he took a step towards her and caught her at the last moment before she hit the ground. He sat down on the floor, holding her tightly in his arms. She was coughing hard and loudly, splashing blood on both of them, but he didn't care about the mess it was making. With each cough there was more and more blood, and Coulson's heart broke at the thought that the last time she died, in the temple, stabbed with a sword by an alien wearing his face, she had bled out to death too. This time he was with her, but that didn't comfort him at all. He’d give anything to be able to change places with her now, so as not to have to watch how it’s tiring her out and how life’s slowly leaving her body.

When the coughing fit finally passed and it seemed that she had no more blood left to cough out, the sharpness in her eyes returned for a moment and she looked up at him. "Phil?" It was the first time she called him by his name since he was first created and since she came out of the hyperbaric chamber, and that fact made him want to cry like a child. But he couldn't cry, he had to be strong for her because that was what she needed now. The warmth, the stability from something familiar that would help her calm down for the last few moments of her life.

"I’m right here," he said, trying to keep his tone calm. He pulled her closer to him, careful not to cause her any more pain, and gently brushed back the locks of hair that fell on her face. He looked closely for signs of injuries, but there weren’t any. Something had attacked her from the inside and there was nothing he could do to help her get rid of it. "Do you remember what happened? Who did this to you?"

"I… I don’t…" she started, but before she could finish, the cough attack shook her again. Her body arched up as it tried to fight the disease consuming it, but there was nothing left to come out of her. Her muscles relaxed after a few terrifyingly long minutes, but before Coulson could breathe a sigh of relief, her eyes lost focus again. His heart stopped for a moment.

"Hey, hey, stay awake," he said, gently patting her cheek. "Stay awake, I need you to stay with me." She blinked several times as she slipped back to consciousness. She looked at him again. Dark shadows appeared under her eyes, and her skin was beaded with sweat. She was breathing shallow, unevenly, and it was evident that each next breath was causing her pain and that she was struggling with that pain to get at least a few more seconds of being alive. She knew she was dying, he could see it in her eyes. She knew it was over and that this time there would be no one or nothing to magically bring her back to life. "Welcome back," he said softly, forcing a gentle smile. She was staring at him all the time.

"Hey," she whispered weakly.

"Hey, you," he whispered back and leaned over her to kiss the top of her head. "Don’t say anything, save your strength for later. You’re strong, you will get through this."

"You know," she began, ignoring his words. "I can feel them."

"Feel what?"

"Your emotions." He took a shaky breath in, never taking his eyes off of her even for a moment. All this time, he was the only one whose emotions her new power wasn’t allowing her to sense. Why could she feel them now? He couldn't decide if it was a good or a bad thing. He didn't want her to deal with emotions that weren’t hers again now. He swallowed, feeling tears beginning to well up behind his eyes again.

"And what are they like?" he asked. She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke again her voice was so quiet he could barely hear her.

"You’re in love with me."

Those few words were enough to make the tears he was trying to hold back for her to run down his face, and a soft sob escaped from his mouth. He put a hand on her cheek and smiled as sincerely as never before. " _As I have always been_ ," he said.

And then she smiled back. And, though delicate and surrounded by slowly drying blood, it was the most beautiful smile Phil had ever seen in his entire life.

She was finally at peace. And she finally knew.

They were smiling at each other like that for a few more moments, Phil clutching Melinda's hand in his, until she just stopped, and her normally warm brown eyes went blank. Her chest stopped rising and he could no longer feel the blood flowing through her veins. He made no attempt to try to wake her up again, knowing that no matter what he’d do, she wouldn’t wake up again.

Because her _eyes_ were _open_.

He hid his face in her hair and cried until the darkness engulfed everything around him one more time, forcing him to experience the same pain over and over again.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy AoS Day!


End file.
